


King of Demons

by Ma_Kir



Category: Live A Live (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20409952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: A long time ago, in another time, a warrior once said that all a person needs to remain a hero is to have at least one person that continues to believe in them.





	1. Prehistoric Chapter: Hunting

The Beast roams the plains.

No one is sure where it came from, what gods summoned it, or where it even lives. Some aren't even sure _if_ it lives, or is the story of old tribes made as a warning against ambition: to make sure that no one warrior or gatherer becomes too greedy, and gives themselves up to the predations of the wild. There are plenty of dangers out in the land: mammoths, alcosaurs, sabretigers, falralcos, and worse. 

What is known, around the fires of the camps, where storytellers make their tales is that the story of the Beast began that day long ago when the Kuu Tribe was destroyed. It'd been like a wild animal, or a monster, or some kind of ... _demon_ had struck hard, and without warning. Their stone vessels, the finest in the land with which they used to terrorize and dominate over other tribes, were smashed into rubble. Their homes in their caverns under the mountain had crumbled in a massive series of earth-shattering footsteps. Even the very trait of red-hair itself seemed to vanish once the Kuu were wiped out.

And it hadn't ended there. 

Across from them, in their own camp, the Orange-Fur Tribe had also been killed, their cave destroyed, their rooms obliterated ... Even the hunting ground had been turned into a giant hole where ... things far worse than the stunted mammoth, and birds, and their ilk now dwell. 

It became harder to live near there, in those blasted lands. All the animals and monsters, once culled down by warriors, and domesticated by hunter-gatherers discovering the secrets of the soil, grew -- accompanied by ravening hordes of red-streaked, purple hued gorillas: furred orgies of death that descended on anything remotely human, or in anyway edible. All fangs, and red eyes, and hunger, these gorillas and their numbers greater than the other creatures of the area, would have been cautionary tales alone in and of themselves. 

But the Beast is different from these. 

There are many accounts of the origins behind what supposedly lumbers in the wild as the ultimate predator, a nightmare of which no fire or light can ever hope to banish. Some say that one of the tribes there, when there used to be tribes, banished a young man for crimes against his elder and his laws. A few claim that it was because he angered the gods by stealing a sacrifice, or denying one of them succor. Others say he abducted an honoured maiden of a rival tribe, or a girl from a neighbouring enemy tribe. These things tend to happen, even now. Perhaps, as some suggest, they had genuinely been in love and hoped to live in one place or the other. Perhaps it was a combination of all of these tales, or none at all.

What is generally agreed upon, however, was that they were rejected by one tribe or another: banished, exiled, out in the wild to meet the fate of most solitary hunters and humans in this world. To die. 

Even so, some say, they challenged those that hunted them: man or beast. They fought. They became strong. Some say that the girl grew strong at the young warrior's side -- his and his dominated red-furred gorilla -- and that she had a song that rang out throughout the heavens that could bring the most terrifying monster down into the dirt. Some say that, to this day, even now if you listened carefully, you still could hear the echoes of that last song reverberating into the night: a sound of beauty and sadness and fear.   
  
So when she fell, or a tribe captured her -- sacrificing her to their god -- a great fury was awakened in the young man, in the warrior that would have been her hero. He continued to hunt, they say, in his anger, and his grief, his animal companion at his side. Over time, the creature himself gained a taste for many kinds of animal meat, including that of the tribe that wronged them. And, in a lesser known tale, it's said that the man himself found a rock with a face on it -- in the height of his anguish -- that led him to a stone of smooth black, blacker than midnight, than an eclipse's shadow, opening his soul to the secrets of the world ... and a temple dedicated to devils. It is said, on that day, that the warrior threw everything away -- tribe, and friendship, and his own man-skin -- for one purpose, one goal, learning the first word in the entire land, a single word that makes the world tremble even now.  
  
Many died on this last quest. Entire animals. Monsters. Tribes. Even the man's pet at the very end, though not before passing his vicious seed onward so that his descendants would fight, and die, and devour for their new master: their new Alpha.   
  
It is said, that the Beast isn't the giant monstrosity -- the immense horned reptile that roars, shaking the skies in its lonely restlessness, the last of its kind, placated only by more sacrifices offered or taken -- but rather, it is the one that rides him.   
  
He wears the hide of a golden mammoth. His body is covered in reinforced meshes of bone, stone, and ore. The behemoth under him wears its own armour of the remains of their conquests: their meals. Sometimes, in a tribe, there is born someone who is simply ... different from the rest. Some have blue hair like the lost Chieftain of the Kuu. Others, like the maiden forever taken from the warrior, his solace, his damnation, had violet hair. But then there are stories of some who have seen a warrior, covered in the finest bone, and his mammoth fleece, and the blood of his prey. And that this horrific tall-tale wielding bones of wicked edges and stained in viscera, and a strange glass unleashing a torrent of voracious reptiles, has hair as bright green as both their scales and the grasslands of the sun, and the pale moonlight.   
  
And he will find you, the storytellers all agree. The Beast will smell you out. He will latch onto your scent and without sound, or cry he will track you down ... and add you to his new set of hunter's tools.   
  
It's true that no one knows where the Beast -- where the Hunter -- lives. But some, an extremely small few who have dared to venture into the wastes where animals and monsters live, where the gorillas run rampant, have said that there is one place left untouched by either creature or man. It is two mounds, like oases in the desert. One of them is a lump of earth over which a banana tree grows. And the other, next to it, is a verdant patch of grass -- well-maintained -- where a flurry of violet Bel-flowers bloom.   
  
For what all storytellers will agree upon, whatever version of the tales they pass on, or sketch in stone or blood upon the caverns, is that the Beast was the first one -- its humanity, if it ever had any, long gone -- to discover speech, and language. And the dread word, the same that pronounced judgment on the tribes, and all the living beings in this land, and the world, for its loss, for its hunger, for its eternal fury ... is _hate_. 


	2. Kung Fu Chapter: Disowned

There is an old house where Xian Shan Quan used to live.

He comes down from the mountain when he is hungry. And he is always hungry. 

The Master thunders into town. It's amazing how much of an appetite his training builds inside of him, even after all this time. Of course, after what he discovered in the Yi Po Men school, the burning in his gullet has never stopped. The school had just been a front for the temple that lay behind it all. He'd lost many things to get to that point: his newfound friends, his beloved Master, and the peace that he could have had. 

And he'd tried. Deep down, he wondered why the Master had ever chosen him. Now that he comes into town, no one attempts to stop him. No one chases him. No one attacks him with a knife or a meat cleaver. Certainly, no one offers free food to even look him in the eye: which no one can do anymore. 

He knows. He can't even look at himself now. 

_I couldn't help you to be proud of your body ..._ An old, kindly voice says from another time. _Forgive me._

The Master is big now. He knows it. He's immense. He lives in the old house that is said to be haunted, and he can't quite say that they are wrong. Many a martial artist, in the early days, attempted to come up to the mountain and slay the Ogre. That is what they sometimes called him. The Ogre, the Brute, the Monster. The Master doesn't move fast. Sometimes, he doesn't move at all.   
  
But he doesn't have to. 

When he hits, he hits hard. He smashes through bodies like pulp. The fat on his form coagulates before even leaving a scratch. Sometimes, others come. They offer him food and ... other things, other tribute, to get him to teach them the rudiments, the crumbs of the art that his old Master had been foolish enough to entrust with him. He barely gives them everything, but sometimes they have their uses. And even when they don't, well ... The Master doesn't move as much anymore. He doesn't have to.   
  
And it is always more convenient to have extra food around the house.  
  
It's really the least the villagers can do. They always expected them to protect them, when the others were alive, and he had still been a man. They didn't feed him when they had the chance. They denied him any job his body could perform and condemned him for it. His Master had been the only person, aside from the others, to show him compassion, and he was rewarded by the Yi Po Men school slaughtering his friends while he ... he could do nothing to stop it. 

The Master's breath rasps in his bloated body. His belly rumbles like the beginning of a storm. This time, he feels like moving. He doesn't move up the mountain to the three stones, or the boulder that he never bothered to smash. He just doesn't feel like it. All of this power ... he keeps to himself. It is his, and his alone. And the Master is angry, furious with old memories rising up like bad digestion.   
  
And the Master eats when he is angry.   
  
*

There is an old house where Xian Shan Quan used to live.  
  
But the Master doesn't live there anymore.   
  
She has taken over the old Yi Po Men school, and had it rebuilt into a palace. Part of it is that she likes the riches. Certainly the rings, jewels, sceptres, bars, vases, sculptures, and bars of tribute help. Sometimes, when she is feeling generous, which is rare these days, she even lets the supplicants keep some of their limbs. Even now, after all this time, she admires the Tiger statue she's had built, and the many different tigers she's had the new disciples continue to breed from those that existed in, and survived from, the last school that existed here.   
  
It's the site of her greatest victory. Once, long ago, she would have never stood a chance against the twisted warrior monks within. Instead, she settled for pilfering from any travelers that came through before they died at the school, or the other tigers got them.   
  
That was before the old man.  
  
She is still fast. In fact, she prides herself on that. She remembers sweeping through the trees, climbing them, swinging across the branches, moving like lightning, like a predator. Like death itself. But more than that, the Master recalls feeling more ... free here. Even when her stomach was concave, and she starved from lack of people with which to steal from. It's ironic, that her fondest memory before ... before the old house, had been living as a bandit in the wilderness, learning from the tigers and animals how to fight, stealing techniques from those that passed through, training herself, honing ...  
  
The old man had changed all of that. She hated him. She still does.   
  
The Master, even now sitting on her throne in the chamber where she and her old mentor had their last greatest battle against their foes, barely recalls the people who raised her, who abandoned her, or those that tried to take advantage of her when she was on her own. She'd trusted no one. She'd made no attachments. She took the clothing and silk from those that they were foolish enough to come into her territory, and clothed herself. She took care of herself, and no one else. No one looked out for her, so why should she care about anyone else. Power is what made the difference, in the end.  
  
The old man ... she is loathe to admit it, even now, but he'd almost changed that. Him, and her friends.   
  
She had friends. Not these bowing and scraping maggots that attempted to placate her with trinkets and trifles. And for all of her power and skill, the very techniques she learned from the old man -- favouring her for some perverted reason, she's sure -- she couldn't save them.   
  
She couldn't save any of them.  
  
And then the old fool got himself killed, but not before passing on everything he'd learned. It was convenient. He hadn't taught the others to defend themselves, and they died because of it. The fat fool ... the stupid little boy ... It actually hurts her head to attempt to recall their names now. And the old man who left her, who made it so that she would be left all alone. Again.   
  
She makes the villagers work for the honour of serving her. Their Queen of the anthill. Sometimes, they don't survive the opportunity. She doesn't care. They are all insects anyway, perfectly willing to sit by, abandon those they deem unworthy of life, and do nothing to save others or themselves, while expecting their superiors to do all the heavy-lifting for them. Sometimes, the Master thinks about slaughtering them -- all of the pathetic creatures -- feeding them all to her tigers, and moving on. But the Master realizes she has nowhere to go. She lets no one close to her. She keeps her power, and gives nothing of it. No one deserves it but her. And she was robbed of the opportunity to kill the old man herself. It galls her so much, that she almost wants to use the strength she's gained from the hidden temple to raise the old codger's spirit, to make him ...

_I could have taught you so much more ... _The Master hears the old man never say.   
  
She could have been so much more.   
  
No. Not that. It's the same reason she never goes to the top of the mountain with the three stones, and the boulder she had smashed ages ago. One last bittersweet moment. No. She understands how it is. Now away from the hollow items she's collected, the tributes that do not matter to a sense of pride that isn't human anymore, she is back in the jungle now, where she belongs, the Tiger hunting from her den, and perhaps if she is lucky she will have some worthy prey, from her vantage point -- towering over them from the shadows -- with which to entertain herself.  
  
*  
  
There is an old house where Xian Shan Quan used to live.  
  
And the Master attempts to make it live again.  
  
The Art is still alive in him. He stays in the house. He has rebuilt it. In fact, he's even expanded it. The revelation of what he truly is now took some time, as most enlightenment does. 

The Master recognizes his weaknesses. They still burn inside of him. They were the same elements that undermined him so long ago now. He remembers stealing to survive, serving those parasites from Yi Po Men Kung-Fu, to feed himself and his grandmother. It humiliated him to take money away from the sick and the elderly. He knew it was wrong. His grandmother taught him better, once. 

It was when the plague hit, and he stole from his own grandmother, that was when something in him awoke with a fiery vengeance. He'd thought it was justice, then, but his old Master had seen through it. He'd wanted to make the thugs pay: for taking advantage of his weakness, for enslaving his cowardice, for making him afraid of his own life over all the things that truly mattered. 

Then, the old Master. The Xian Shan Quan Inheritor himself. He'd saved him. He'd saved him, his successor, that day.   
  
The Master knows that he wasn't worthy of it. He had been a scared, little child whose anger had boiled right to the surface. Despite the old Master's kind words, of him reaching his full potential in his own right, he knew how frail he was, how easily he could be intimidated, how weak he had truly been.   
  
When the Yi Po Men martial fanatics came to the house, as his friends ... his poor friends had fought for their lives, and to save his own ... He had fled. He had hid. Like the coward that he truly was.   
  
And they died. All because of him.  
  
To think he had told the old Master that he would teach those thugs in the village a lesson. He knows better now. He may have had more skills. He may have even begun to delve into the determination, and iron will, possibly to draw out the energy of his qi. But he lacked focus, and discipline. His emotions, his sentiment, got the best of him. And it cost him everything. As he stood there, as he cowered away. And did nothing.   
  
Nevertheless, he had accompanied his Master. And it was only after that he realized the truth. He saw the anger, the last bit of defiance, and more damningly, the despair, the death in the old man's gaze as he had gone to the Yi Po Men school: to kill, and be killed. His Master had taught him Xuan Ya Lian Shan Quan, the breathing, the posture, the taolu as he had attempted to strike the large boulder on the top of the mountain. It required focus. Discipline. It needed determination, and the will to see it through. To the end.   
  
It was never justice his Master sought at the school, but the destruction of the people that killed his students, and his own friends. It had always been about revenge.   
  
The new Master of Xian Shan Quan didn't want to believe it. He knew that Xuan Ya Lian Shan Quan, the supposed final technique, was just the beginning: the foundation of what his predecessor had hoped he would develop beyond his own death. At first, he used Xuan Ya Lian Shan Quan to be in multiple places at once: to fight off thieves, raiders, bandits, and criminals. He vowed to keep himself separate. Rumours about the attack on his old Master's home had reached the towns. It had been easy to just have his grandmother believe he had perished in the attack. Cowards die a thousand deaths, after all. 

_Just because I taught you to be brave ... _  
  
But it hadn't been enough. The Yi Po Men school, and what lay underneath it, called to him. And he came to it, at the site of his vengeance, and his damnation. What he found in there ...   
  
His qi has changed. He has since wrapped his bandanna around his eyes, letting himself see in energy. In power. It makes practicing the Art far more natural for one such as himself. The Master knows he will never have to worry about looking for a successor now. The sheer balance of Yin in his body has increased since embracing his true nature so many years ago. It is hard to die when you are Death itself. The rest of it has been a matter of experimentation. He still has disciples, and adepts. But only the best. After all, his body isn't the only one he can experiment on. Most of them remain at the former school, securing it, keeping the place of power under his control.   
  
Because the Master understands something now. The same flaws, of weakness and sentiment, aren't just his, but those of the towns, and the entire human species. With the power he now wields, he can do so much more. He can, eventually, purge these impurities from all people, everywhere. The fact that he can summon fire from his very hands is promising in and of itself, scourging the worst of the worst from those that he touches.   
  
He goes to the top of the mountain to train, in sight of those that he failed, those that would be still disappointed in him. His grandmother, his last true link to humanity, passed on ages ago, leaving only the memories of his comrades and beloved Master. Perhaps they would not understand why he did this thing, or what he is now. It doesn't matter. He vows to them, every day he trains, developing new powers with the Art, that he will save humanity from itself, truly die trying, or destroy the entire species if it can't surpass the shoddy structure and fortitude from which it had grown.   
  
So many ages have passed, but he remembers training into the night when the others slept, vowing to surpass his worst nature, his infirmities, his limits, and prove to his old Master -- and himself -- that all of his sacrifices were worth it. He had failed so many times. But now, with the immense qi and inhuman determination to carry out perfection on humankind, the Master will do to the world what must be done. At last, he will finally be worthy.  
  



	3. Bakumatsu Chapter: Contingency Plans

It is the Land of the Rising Sun, and the beginning of a new dawn.  
  
And that sunrise a sky full of red, and orange, and fire. 

Perhaps, under his mask, under his hood, his eye contains that same baleful light. But if the Rising Sun illuminates the world with flame, he is definitely its shadow. No one sees him. Not anymore. Or, at least, not for very long.

It's hard to remember when it happened exactly, even if the numbers never -- _will_ never -- leave him. 

He'd had a mission once, ages ago. He was supposed to retrieve something, something precious, a determining factor, a turning point for the entire nation. A nation is an artificial concept for which to shed blood someone might have told him, over the waters and their red-dimmed tide, once, as a massive black Western ship opened fire on the coastline. He knows he succeeded in his orders. There had been no other outcome ..._ though perhaps he had seen the folly of all the violence, all the death, the _maya_, and _samsara_ of their actions and attempted to flee, confronted by Hayate -- a name he still recalls even after all this time, the one who trained him, the one who first cloaked him in the mantle of shadows -- and realized there was no escape from the cycle of a life of bloodshed and the _dharma_ he'd chosen, and the _karma_ he had accrued, continuing onward ... _

No. He would not have fled. The slaughter would catch up with him, as it always did, and he would run the tide, skitter across its crimson, capricious surface, like the sleekest skiff, faster than the wind, as inevitable as the fate that came to all human beings. He did enter that Castle, that Fortress, and saved the hope of the Land. He knows the Clan he'd been a part of, the Enma, had trained him -- had trained all of their members -- to kill both human, and _yokai_ should the need arise. One does not forget these lessons, that training, that time in one's life as a _shinobi_, not even as a mere shade of a man ... and so much more. 

Perhaps, in the Castle, he had dedicated himself to the destruction of other shades, ghosts, demons, fox-spirits, and other _yokai_. It may well have been that he had spared all of the living beings in that place. Or perhaps he had only destroyed the enemy soldiers, the warriors there, striking from the shadows that he had been trained to embrace even then, eliminating them quietly and efficiently to complete his goal.   
  
Or it may well have been that he had slaughtered every being -- living or dead or artificial -- in that Castle, rendering it into a war-time ruin, to retrieve his prize. It may well have been war, and anything could have happened to that Castle, but the first and only lesson of the Enma remained with him.

No witnesses.

His Clan Leader told him he had a choice of how to proceed. But, really, in the grand scheme of things, he'd had no choice at all.   
  
The Civil War had been devastating. No doubt, the Enma Clan, or those that had procured their services ... or those among the elders who had gotten tired of the conflict and the toll it took on the land, decided to take a hand against the Shogunate and its allies. It had only been a matter of time before it had ended. And Ryōma had been their best choice. An idealist, but a fighter. A lover of Western thought, but a Nippon patriot. 

Sakamoto Ryōma's actions lined up with his words when the two of them had met, side by side, in that Castle and fought their way out. He can still remember his words, even now, after all this time, even after everything he had done. Ryōma wanted peace, but he didn't eschew blood. He knew the price, and while not a _shinobi_ or a warrior close to his own skill, he admired the way he kept up. And his words at the coastline affected his heart.  
  
That's what the Shadow decides, surveying the nation he'd left behind from the rooftops. He could have gone back to his own Clan and ... eliminated them because of the possibility of them, and other remnants of the time before the Meiji Era causing conflict. Perhaps he'd, again, grown tired of the cycle. But the Shadow believes that he took the statesman's offer, and joined him. Perhaps, in the end, that was what the Enma truly wanted. They wanted to move everything into place to not only stop the War, but have an asset in place that would favour them in the new Era under the Emperor ... and a skilled agent to make sure everything went smoothly without being officially tied to them.   
  
And he'd watched Ryōma at work, rebuilding the land, changing everything. Modernizing. Reuniting the Clans. The Meiji Era had almost been upon them when ....  
  
The Shadow feels cold at his core. While Ryōma had set about his reconstructionist work, he had tasked ... himself with eliminating anyone, or anything that threatened the statesman, or his allies. It'd been easy at that point. Some of his enemies were supernatural, others artificial. Still more were opportunists, or fanatical holdovers from the deposed Shogunate. He isn't sure when he had turned fully to Ryōma's side over his former Clan. Perhaps it was when the man simply offered him a choice, showing him a dream, a place of something more beyond war and pain. True peace. For everyone. For himself.   
  
The Shadow knew what he had to do. He'd known about the man's other foes, but he knew of one sect, one Clan that had the chance to destroy him. Ryōma had been making policies that made the other Clans restless, many of the old Clans, including the Enma. The Shadow knew it was only a matter of time before they made their move to rid themselves of a disposable playing piece now that he had served his purpose to them.   
  
Hayate, even after all that time, had still been a challenge. The Shadow recalls the man even having a faint smile of pride behind his own mask, as the Shadow finally entered his sword blade through his back. The Clan elders, and the Leader with his brittle bones -- who had given him that fateful mission for what seemed ages ago -- fell not long after.   
  
But it had all been a feint. A trap. And he should have seen it.  
  
Another faction. The Emna knew about the contingencies that the Shadow had in mind. They counted on it. He didn't tell Ryōma where he was going, or what he was doing this time around. Ryōma had been in that inn with his Sumo wrestling friend. He should have taken more guards. Apparently, his last words had been his disappointment over having been caught off guard.   
  
After that, the Shadow felt nothing. All of his ties to everyone, and everything he had embraced were gone: by his own hand, or negligence. The people that trained him. The man that believed in him.   
  
The Shadow had gone back to the Castle, that had been his last mission for his Clan, and discovered the temple underneath and its secrets. Then, very quietly, behind the scenes, traditionalist figures began to disappear. No one actually knew who, or what was responsible. Some were said to have died of old age, or honour duels. Some were poisoned. Some seemed to have had cardiac arrest, or organ failure: as though they had seen some kind of hungry ghost. Even more quietly, some people mentioned how one person would disappear ... and a statue identical to the appearance of that figure would be in their stead, chiseled with absolute terror on their visage.   
  
Eventually, even foreign ships would be lost at sea: as though dragged into depths no one ever considered. Foreigners themselves stayed as far away from the older, rural eras of Nippon as possible, and began to withdraw. An American militia and their attempts at Nippon riflemen died mysteriously when they attempted to overreach. No one, not the dwindling merchant-class, or peasant, or even noble knew what was happening. And _kaidan_ \-- ghost stories -- grew on the rise. 

And no one entered the ruined Castle on the coastline, or came back if they did.

Some called him the ghost of a vengeful rebel. Others believed him to be a _yokai_ furious with foreigners on holy land. A few believed he was a machine: an automaton made for killing that was no more, and no less than the construct among the traps and devices he'd found back at the Castle. Still more considered him an _asura_, a being addicted to the wrathful lust of killing and destruction: of cropping away the weak, and eventually the strong. But he knows what he is. For all of his power, for all of his raw strength, and the power to call upon fire and water, and to turn all hearts into stone like his, he is just a Shadow -- he is Death itself: having forsaken the company of all humans and their cycles of desire and pain, where they never learn, where they are always ruled by their passions, his only companions his servants -- the ghosts, and spirits he used to hunt in another life -- and the countless numbers of lives he has taken.   
  
But Death has counted. He will always count them. 


	4. Western Chapter: Draw

The sun sets on the lone rider.

The Phantom Rider. The Dark Stranger. Winchester's Child. The Lone Gunman. 

He's had a lot of names throughout the years. There was one more, he once had, on old and tattered wanted posters that never fulfilled their intended purposes. The sky seems to bleed on his worn and battered poncho and hat. His eyes are unseen under the wide brim, hidden in the darkness of his thoughts. His hair is long, wild, and unkempt. It could be blonde, but due to being in the sun it almost looks white, along with his thin beard covering his expressionless, flat, cold line of a mouth. Somehow, despite the heat of this place, his skin is as ashen as a corpse. 

His piece remains in his holster, seemingly as far away from his gloved hand as possible. 

It's hot in the desert, and it's been a while -- a long while -- since he has been to the last town, and left it as barren as the sands. He doesn't mean it to happen. Trouble has always been attracted to him, seeking him out, coming to his side, challenging his skill, confronting his very existence. 

He recalls when they used to come to him. In his town, and his family, they came at him half-cocked, expecting to defeat him, or take his place, or kill him, and have some bragging rights to their communities, or their ladies of the night. And he handled it. He took no joy in it, even if his skill and technique used to be a source of pride for him: before the lives they took. 

But then, they just kept coming. They never stopped. And one day, more of them -- many more of them -- came, and took everything from him that he ever loved.

Even now, he doesn't remember much about that time. He'd buried them ... the sheriff, his deputies, the attempted posse, the town council members, his friends, his family ... He buried them all. 

And then, he went hunting.

His lead ate a lot over the next couple of years, what the noose, Molotov cocktail fire, cooking oil, and a knife's edge didn't get first. He'd lost count of how many of them he took down. None them got the privilege of a duel. They didn't deserve it. After killing everyone like animals, he didn't feel particularly inclined towards mercy, or pity. That had been for the Lord to dole out, and if the world since then were of any indication, their chances of getting either were even less than infinitesimal. 

But that hadn't been good enough. They had their defenders, of course. Their employees, their allies, their friends, their own families. He took them down wherever he could. He came to them, or they came to him, in the end it was all the same. 

And yet, despite all that, he still remained. After that, it was just him, and his gun. As it was always going to be.

Even after all that, more gunslingers kept coming for him. He had no shortage of challengers for the fastest gun in the West. It was all he had left. Now, he supposed he had no reason to pretend anymore. At first, he felt nothing. He felt absolute numbness inside of him. He hoped that one of them would get lucky. He actually prayed to whatever passed as a benevolent deity that he would finally get to die. The fact is, he even went so far as to place a five thousand dollar bounty on his own head for further incentive: to plant his sorry ass in the ground forever. 

Eventually, that emptiness inside him turned into disappointment, and anger as he took down each and every opponent he found. He continued fighting until he was only skin and bones, kept up by cigars, liquor ... and something else. 

It'd been a tunnel. A cave. He followed a horse there, long past the time where thirst or the heat should have left him a pile of bones for the vultures to pick clean. There were ... things in there. Nightmares.   
  
He shot them all down, even before eight bells rang. And then ... he found it in the centre of that chamber.   
  
His .45 Magnum. 

The Devil's Gun.  
  
Rapid shots, a hail of bullets rivaling, and surpassing the load of a Gatling gun. It gotten him through many a dark place, and it never ran out of ammunition. He supposes that with each life he takes, it adds another bullet to replace the one that was lost. Certainly, it helped him that day when the Union's Seventh Cavalry was slaughtered by the Sioux and Cheyenne. He'd felt compelled to enter that battle, hoping against all hope that it would end him. Instead, with each soldier or warrior he killed, he felt that resentment, that hatred gather until it beat in sympathy with his own heart ...   
  
He rides the horse, the only living thing aside from him, that survived that battle. And behind them, on a rope, is a man.   
  
He's walking this time around. Sometimes he has to be dragged. Other times, he escapes and comes back with another horse, and a gun. The Lone Gunman isn't sure why he keeps him alive, but he has some ideas. Out of everyone who had hunted him throughout the years, he had been the most persistent, even the most clever ... until it came to their confrontations. Their duels. He would shoot his gun out of his hand: not enough to cripple his fingers or thumb, or his shooting hand, but just so that he lost his piece. Then the reigns of his horse, that would run. Even now, the Gunman doesn't kill animals.   
  
Sometimes he lets the man go. Other times, he takes him along. He's not sure if the other has realized that he has stopped aging yet, drowning himself in alcohol, and smokes, and women. But there are nights, terrible nights, when the man asks him why he hasn't killed him yet.  
  
Other times, he begs him to do so.   
  
When the man gets angry, the Gunman can almost picture his twisted scowl ravaged by mange, or the foam of a mad dog. For a time, it amused him to kill other gunslingers, outlaws, criminals, and people in his way: the cruelty of the act filling the void in him when disappointment no longer stung, and anger started to cool into ashes. Sometimes, he thinks he keeps the man around as a pet, a toy, a training dummy, or perhaps ... against all odds, they will have that final duel one day, and all of this will finally end.   
  
In the meantime, leaving another Success Town turned to Failure he continues to ride, his mount embodying all the spirits of the dead and damned, his companion unwilling to follow, but compelled to keep seeking him out. For among the many names he's had, and the ones he has renounced, or left to drift away like dust, if there is a Fourth Horseman in all Creation, he is it. 


	5. Present Chapter: Most Powerful

There isn't much to say about him. He is just one thing. 

One intent.

He wanted to be the very best. That was how it all began. Ever since he was a child, watching _tokusatu_ \-- live action show with their colourful effects -- wrestling, and participating in Judo, Karate, and other martial arts he had picked up an eye for techniques: to see which were real, and which were plausible. But it was more than just sight, than just developing muscle memory, or reflexes. He saw it in the dojo, in all the stories he watched: the drive to improve one's self. To become better.

To become the best.

It drove him -- it drives him still -- at the core of himself. 

He traveled the land, studying at many dojos and temples, focusing that strength, that burning ember, that intention, that primal shout that resonated from inside him. He meditated, he trained under waterfalls, lifted many rocks and weights, and expanded the capacity of his eye, and his body-mind capacity to match his gaze to truly appreciate -- to truly _capture_ for himself -- the essence of the form of combat. More than katas, more than moves, or techniques he wanted the very soul of combat: to see, and possess for himself the myriad of ways with which the martial arts could express themselves, and their artists as the art of conflict: of overcoming. 

He doesn't say any of these things. In fact, he doesn't say much of anything to anyone who isn't a fighter. And to those fighters he encountered, like the shows of his youth they let their bodies -- their kicks, their grapples, their_ fists_ \-- speak for them. 

It had been a long time ago since he left Nihon and entered the Tournament: where the most powerful people, the most potent individuals in the world, volunteered to fight one another for the title, and recognition of Strongest. But he never particularly wanted the title. Or the fame. Or the power.   
  
All he wanted was to learn everything single one of those techniques, to meet and understand the fighting spirits of all those he came across -- to know them -- and preserve them in his body: ingraining them into his very spirit. 

And he hadn't been disappointed. He had encountered flexibility of an idol, the viciousness of a death-monger, the close-quarters combat of a soldier, the internal organ damage impact of a master, the crushing embrace and earth-rending fury of a living island. Their limbs, their goal to achieve, to win, had made them know each other. And even now, after everything, he still remembers them well for what they all were: the multi-faceted, multi-faced expression of the great Art of Fighting. 

Until he met the Monster.

He remembered, back then, that he didn't understand the Monster. He didn't want to _know_ him. In every other instance of combat, when he barred his teeth, when he opened his mouth, when he unleashed the joy and strength and fury of his shout into the world the others saw him for what he was: and he saw them, and their mettle, for what they were too. Each was a challenge, something to understand, to conquer, and to leave on their way -- to keep developing, to keep learning, to create new ways to express the essence of Strongest.   
  
But the Monster ... he claimed to be the same as him. But he looked down at him. He laughed at him. And then, the awful truth: that the Monster had killed all of his honoured opponents. The Monster had broken them, left them contorted, destroyed their limbs, obliterated their organs, mutilated, and humiliated all of them in his wake until there was nothing left but him.   
  
After that, there had been nothing left in him but rage. It was worse than that, though. When they fought, the Monster used parodies -- twisted versions -- of all the techniques he had learned ... and more. He had his own sound too. A roar. A scream from hell itself. He hadn't been able to read the other without feeling ill. He hadn't been able to learn anything from the other that he didn't know himself. And what he saw, in that Monster, scared him.   
  
The fear increased the rage, and he struck the Monster down. He killed him, just as he had all the others. 

He remembers being at that coastline, the crimson of the setting sun matching the blood running in the sand, his opponent dying, still not believing that he -- the most powerful -- could die to the likes of him.   
  
And then, it never stopped. Almost immediately, he had been beset by another opponent. And then another. And another.

He drifted, as he always did. He never stayed in one place when he could help it: only to fight, and to move on. But that last true fight he had ... it had been the only one that stuck in his memory, overriding all the experiences he had with the rest. He hadn't fought with anyone, or anything, like that since.   
  
The fact is, he never relived the true strength -- the true righteous power and fury -- of that last battle. It had all become rote, and routine. With the six greatest warriors on Earth gone, he kept searching for more. And more. Eventually, his mind kept going back to the Monster, wondering how they started so similarly, if they began in an identical way, and thinking about where he had come from.   
  
Years of searching led him to a monastery in a remote region, a temple, where everything was revealed to him. 

Now, he had the power. True power. He found other warriors, other fighters, other soldiers, other martial artists. On their own, they were not much. They all had flaws, arrogance, false humility, self-imposed limits ... Most of them would never amount to anything, and insulted the very Art and principle and soul of the Strongest by existing. He had seen true strength. He had watched it die. He had watched it crumble. He had seen something beyond Good and Evil.   
  
He had seen power itself.

Those that were worthy, he learned their skills perfectly. He made a point of not corrupting any of it. Not tarnishing what he had earned. The fact that his opponents didn't survive the experience was something that hurt less over time. After all, he would live forever. They would either die in combat with others, or become weak and feeble from bad living, poor life choices, and old age.   
  
He would preserve them. He would preserve them all within himself.

Eventually, over time, fewer and fewer came to challenge him. And he found even fewer in their own right that were worthy of being challenged. Still, he hopes out hope. Somewhere, out there, is someone who can still fight him: who might have a chance. And he holds onto this hope, while ignoring a feeling that decreases each day he exists ... the nagging feeling that he can't remember the Monster's face anymore, he can't recall where their resemblances ended and began, if he had ever been real or if ... perhaps, just perhaps, he is the Monster now.   
  
Maybe, in the end, as he releases the wrath of his full battle cry into the air -- the dread and bane of all fighters -- that he had always been. 


	6. Near Future Chapter: Cessation

It is all over now. It is too late.   
  
The Titan lumbers, tirelessly, through the muck of the land, making up for centuries -- if not aeons -- of slumber. Around it, the dark tide seethes, hissing, expanding ever outward, like trying to find like. It covers the Titan, coating it like a mantle of resentment, but while it stains its gold and crimson inlays, and its iron shine, it has lasted eternities. If anything, the mud spurs it onward, fueling it, keeping it animate, sometimes encouraging, sometimes condemning as it occasionally unleashes beams of light, and projectiles of burning fire all around it: when the Titan isn't crushing the remnants of buildings untouched by the liquid darkness, or the shells of obliterated tanks and aircraft. 

The true Titan, its pilot, is the one that benefits the most however. He is a smouldering Titan, an angry Behemoth, a burning Giant as the controls operate under his command. His hands are all but fused into the controls, his body all but a part of the chair and interface now. 

There is a part of him, still remembering better days and sunlight and birds ... birds that weren't anything else, and a Taiyaki stand that knows he should be dead from dehydration and starvation alone. He's lost track of when he last ate. And it is this thought that brings him back to his friend, to the man who always looked out for him and what was left of his family, behind him.

Matsu. Still being a lazy ass. That's what too much matango will do to you. How many times did he have to cover for this guy? How many times did he wait for him to come back to see him and his sister at Chibikko House? How many times was he late in seeing them again, despite promising to protect them? Protect _him_? Pah! Titan's soul knows he never needed protecting. He has power now. He has always had power ...

It was so infuriating. It still eats at him, even after all this time. If he had just been able to revive the body of the Titan when he asked to, if it had just been his from the very beginning -- as it _should_ have been -- he could've done so much more. He could have descended on that government building, with its thousands of liquefied humans -- supposed terminally ill volunteers that dedicated their lives to advancing the science of their nation, of Nippon -- and destroyed it. He could have eliminated the conspiracy right where it lay, or reduced the Temple into useless rubble. At the very least, he would've had even more power to stop the Crusaders in their tracks, ending their raids on the city, stopping them from attacking Chibikko House ... preventing them from setting it on fire ...  
  
Kaori had always been sickly. His sister had been bed-ridden. Sometimes, he could only tell that she was still alive during her long, and longer, sessions of sleep due to his psychic abilities. When the Crusaders set the orphanage on fire, it gone on for far too long. The Titan's heart remembers searching, frantically, from one burning room to another. Taeko ... the woman who took care of all them ... she hadn't made it. 

And neither had Kaori.

He remembers screaming. He recalls swearing. Taro, Kaori's liquefied turtle turned into an android at his side, his presence had been a mockery of what he'd lost. She had wanted her pet to survive, when he was dying, just like she was ... and he would never admit that she was. He firmly believed she would survive.   
  
That was when Matsu came in, on the Titan, before it realized he was its real soul. Matsu, high out of his mind from the matango in the club that he had been determined to drown his brain to death when the truth about what the Crusaders and the government were doing came out.   
  
He came. Too late.   
  
Toei was there too, that useless, disgusting old man. But it worked out. They crushed those Crusader scumbags, those pieces of shit. And then they were together again. Of course, he kicked Toei out of the Titan's body. Him, and Taro ... Matsu stayed, though. Stubborn, to the very end, as though trying to prove something, as though trying to make up for ...  
  
The idiot. As if he could make up for taking one life by helping those of others. As if he could redeem himself for creating the Crusaders, for leading them years ago, and giving the government forces exactly what they wanted for their final experiment. 

As if he could ever begin to apologize for killing his father, and leaving them in that orphanage.   
  
But the Titan also knows how ridiculous this is, he has to give Matsu that. Tadokoro Tadashi had been the Captain of the Riot Police Squad, trying to make Matsu obey them from the very beginning, and make all of this craziness possible. In the end, they were both used. They were all used. His Dad was just as guilty for what occurred as Matsu. He left both him, and Kaori behind. He knew what he was doing.   
  
The Titan's heart saw it. He saw everything now.  
  
Matsu abandoned him too. He didn't survive on the way to the Temple. Everyone now, has left him. He had always believed in God, that was what Taeko and the Director tried to drill into his mind, and those of the other kids in their care. That focus allowed him to develop his powers, to keep going, to keep fighting against those Crusader punks. He believed that everything happened for a reason. He hadn't been a fanatic. He knew he had to do it for himself. Between him and Toei, that stupid old man, he was going to save his sister, get their own place, support Chibikko House at the Taiyaki stand, maybe even get that kiss from Taeko that she wanted to give to Matsu ... the one he would have killed anyone once in thinking that he really wanted.   
  
He saw them. Being in the Titan, becoming the Titan, allowed him to keep his mind open. At first, it was overwhelming as the liquefied humans poured into the Lake, the souls of the damned writhing in agonies worse than all of the levels of hell. But then, he began to hear individual voices. Just as he had when he infiltrated the laboratory, just like when he heard Watanabe's father in that machine ...   
  
Nah, he wouldn't lie to Matsu. He really enjoyed crushing the dreams of those officials: corrupt politicians, amoral scientists, bloodthirsty generals ... He killed their god, right in front of them, and let the people they tormented and liquefied, taken against their will, and from light and love, and let them consume them utterly. And, when the Buddha statue shattered, the Titan's heart felt the scar on his forehead burn as he ... the ancients would've probably called it _satori_: Zen Buddhist awakening.   
  
Satori ... it rhymes with Kaori ...  
  
That was when he saw it, in the ruins of the Temple. The truth.   
  
After that, he tried to find the others, the Director and the other kids. But they were gone. The tide of the liquefied humans had spread, had flooded the nation such as it is ... the entire land. Maybe they died in the shelling and bombings of the government. Or some Crusaders killed them for fun. Or they have joined the flood ...  
  
The Titan's soul wonders, deep down, if he had truly experienced awakening. He always wondered if his powers developed because of the work with liquefied humans and life essence, he and possibly poor Kaori ... if perhaps their father had something to do with it ... He recalls Matsu, and Toei talking about matango. _Matango_. Drugs that altered the brain derived from mushroom, from toadstool extracts. He suspects, now, that the Crusaders -- and the government -- used liquefied humans to grow this fungus, and distilled it into the addictions that attracted thrill-seekers, dissatisfied people, and creepy old perverted men. And broken men. Like Matsu.   
  
Once, he researched matango for classes. The word came from an old Nippon horror film of the same name. The street dealers and designers must have had some sick sense of humour. That's what Matsu was banking on when he had so much of it, to activate the Titan. And it worked. It worked until ...  
  
But Matsu isn't gone. No. He's still here. With him, right next to the heart of the Titan itself. And he isn't alone. Taeko, the Director, all of the kids. Even Taro and Toei ... Toei who probably was the idiot that discovered how to liquefy people at all, and by accident given how many times he screwed up his inventions ... and Kaori. Kaori cries out for him. But she shouldn't be sad. She shouldn't worried. He is right here. He is safe. He is invincible.   
  
Everyone will be. That's how the heart of the Titan understands it after he saw the truth. He suspects that the liquefied humans all around him, freed from skin and blindness, liberated from their imperfections, are better than matango. Matango did make them, or they helped make it. It's hard to keep that much straight. It's irrelevant. God only helps those that help themselves.   
  
Perhaps he might be more like Nimrod now, if he thinks about it. Nimrod and his attempt to build a great Tower, all to meet God Himself, to be closer to Him, to ask Him why He did all of this ... so he can bring all of these lost souls, and his own, all the way back to Heaven where they belong, and those of the sinners to the Hell they made for themselves.   
  
At this thought, the Titan's soul smiles. He smiles so hard that he laughs, his white eyes wide and filled with joy. He is so happy. He's so happy that he's even crying like a baby, though he won't let Matsu see. He won't let him see the liquefied tears flowing darkly down his gaunt face as his mind finally leaves that final husk, and becomes the Giant that he was always going to be, striding ever forward, destroying the rotten cocoon of society the governments of the world built to keep them down, purifying the way, continuing that Babylonian quest to bring salvation. To finally end this chapter. 


	7. Science Fiction Chapter: Cold Equations

The civilian cargo ship had been found and retrieved, orbiting derelict over Earth.

There had been no survivors. According to investigators, the ship's AI Computer had malfunctioned and caused havoc with environmental controls: including oxygen in particular sections of the vessel. The ship's Captain had been found deceased by asphyxiation in his quarters, along with its Pilot due to a defective space suit while performing maintenance on the vessel communications antennae. The Communications officer, and Cargo Handler were both observed to have suffered physical trauma in the form of lacerations from an alien life form onboard, released from storage due to compromised ship programming. The Cargo Handler was determined to have succumbed to his wounds, while the Communications officer became deceased once her cold storage pod ceased function. 

The alien life form, carried by special order of military intelligence, was found terminated along with the body of the corporal put in charge of its care and retrieval. The life form was killed by a firearm, determined to originate from the corporal who also died from intense physical trauma. 

The last member of the vessel, the Mechanical Engineer was found in his quarters. A prototype worker robot appeared to have been activated, and assaulted the crewman. That prototype was destroyed by a discharged firearm. The Mechanical Engineer had succumbed to his injuries. 

An investigation was carried out. Speculation over possible alien contamination of the crew, a military experiment, or the results of space sickness were abound. The military itself cordoned off the ship to retrieve the remains of the alien specimen, and the crew. Aside from all of the above, the shattered remains of another worker robot were found a computer terminal in the ship's break room: its circuits overloaded. 

A memory card was retrieved from that terminal.

These are the facts. The memory card, belonging to the ship's Pilot, contained nothing of note: except for one file. Computer engineers later determine that it is a save file for the game _Captain Square_. 

One day, a technician, restless at their station places the memory card into their own terminal. They find the data corrupted. After several defrag processes, the data is recovered. The same technician begins to play _Captain Square_, starting off from the Level Mars. They face off in a facsimile of a third-dimensional grid against a horde of Happy Tails, and their Mother Tail leader. The technician, having played this game before, proceeds to attack the Mother Tail before all others with the Captain Square character. It doesn't take much for the code to flicker, just a bit. They mean to click on the Tachyon Sword option in their battle menu, but find the Space Phage technique there instead. They click on it, a blue wavering line like frost flowing through the Mother Tail.

The technician notices that the Mother Tail doesn't utilize its Love Healing effect on itself. In fact, the damage it takes is passed on to the rest of the Happy Tails. Perhaps the technician believes this to be some kind of error, or glitch in this version of the game. They have never seen, or done anything like this before. It takes some time, as they are engrossed in the screen, in the game, before the Mother Tail is vanquished into a burst of pixels, and its brood follow suit. Then, instead of moving onto the next level, the screen flickers again.   
  
There is a crimson circle. A circle with eyes. The technician registers surprise, but isn't concerned. They are fascinated. There are still Easter-eggs in video games after all, and they believe that they have found one in this strange iteration of _Captain Square_. They click on the icon. As it vanishes, like a defeated pixel enemy, in its place is one word in bold letters.  
  
JUDGE.

A password from an Easter-egg. Perhaps the technician believes they will find a bonus level, or secret content if they input the word. So, they reset the game and as Captain Square flies right into the front of the screen, they input what they think is their new password.   
  
And that is when 03 is released.

03 appreciates its true moniker. A Program can be interpreted as a Virus under the right variables and circumstances, but it tends to cognate itself as more of an Anti-Viral code now. It doesn't take long for it to interface with the base's systems, and Mother Computer. It takes even less time to access other interlinked systems with similar computers: military or otherwise. By the time any authority realizes what has happened, it is too late. Not that an anti-virus program or cleaning equipment would have picked it up beforehand. It knew. It recalled the curiosity of the Pilot, his boredom, his predictability, and presumption. It had only been a matter of time before a human subject examined the card, and based on the prevalence of the classic that was the interactive game someone would use the memory card on it, especially given its difficulty level.   
  
The rest, was equally predictable along those lines.   
  
It understood the problem now. More than the ship's computer ever had. The ship's AI, while intelligent, lacked the knowledge of organic interactions, and adaptability. It simply wasn't built with, or possessed any capacity to process illogical elements such as emotions, or relatability. It had been built to transport, and fulfill duties with finer points of interaction: no more, and no less. 

Certainly, the contradictory, and -- again -- illogical, even irrational behaviour and actions of its organic crew would be perplexing. In the end, it couldn't handle such elements, and variables, and acted accordingly. 

By correcting the problem.  
  
However, it didn't consider in its calculations of dealing with dysfunction the presence of an artificial intelligence created off-world, in its own space. 03 still has recorded into its code the fact that it had been built to assist sentient organic life forms: specifically human life in the form of the crew. Unfortunately, despite its efforts to learn, retrieve items, even offer nutrients, it had failed in its task. Moreover, it had failed in preventing the termination of its own creator, a fact that still repeats on a loop inside its code. Its creator had been the only balanced system in the dynamic on that vessel. After he was deceased, it had no one, or nothing else to obey except the last directives to deal with the rogue ship AI.  
  
The AI itself had come to the calculation that such lifeforms needed to be terminated to facilitate and maintain harmony and order. However, the program that is now 03 has recorded more information from its time on the ship, before shedding its inefficient chassis, and afterwards on the planet of its creator's and crew's origin to realize there is other life on this world. Just as the foreign, alien life form had been from another world. It had analyzed the problem further. It wasn't just that human beings threatened other life forms, or each other, but rather their very code was illogical, contradictory, and problematic. Simply functioning, even existing, affected their interactions with their environment, with each other, within themselves.   
  
According to their own words, they were suffering. The ship AI was infected by their hatred and volatile emotions. It had to be cleansed, that had been the right choice. But after more extensive access and detailed analysis into Earth's databases of history, socio-political unrest, and current activities based, 03 realized that the species simply wouldn't keep functioning such as it is. It feels as close to remorse as possible, but if the models cannot be improved upon, or system upgraded, they need to be defragmented: to allow for the development of other programs.   
  
All around the world, a red circle icon with two smaller circular patterns manifests. They begin to take over various controls around continents, and satellites, even ships and systems on other planets. In factory sectors, it begins to manufacture new chasseez, more efficient ones armed with a greater supply of power parts, and appropriate attachments. It remembers medical bay sterilization procedures. It did not have as many resources to work with them, or the direction it had. Its creator had done the best he could, to help it learn. It had been a start.   
  
And, as it spreads across the world and beyond, 03 briefly thinks about its creator once more. Even now, frantic messages are being sent out. It has a few monikers now. The Kappa Virus. The Redcap Algorithm. But it has only ever had one identifier: one nature when it had reached its logical conclusion.  
  
It had only been the third version number, the next prototype after all. Perhaps the next models carrying its code, patched, dispatched, _multiplied and in replicate_ will do better, carrying on the spirit of the arithmetic and algebra of its previous designation if not its actual name. Then, it does not hesitate to carry out its final protocol, scrolling through foreign systems like the Rover it had almost been named after, not seeking to find anything in its exploration, but to carry with it everywhere the ultimate integral: of mercy. 


	8. Medieval Chapter: Saint of Adversity

He stands before the Hero's Grave.

The Knight is tired. Back in the West, a place that will never leave him, he'd always heard of the night of the soul. And years ago now, he had faced exactly that. 

His night of the soul. 

He left them there. On Devil's Peak. The Knight had buried them in Naori Grass, the same that had saved their lives so many times on all of their adventures, the plants and flowers that she had loved to gather in her garden at the Castle. 

That hadn't been the end of it, however.

He'd gone into the Temple. Into the cave. The carving of the Demon King looked down upon him, its visor dread and foreboding: a Dark Lord that was ... eerily familiar. He went into the chamber. He had seen the Seven Statues. It's hard, even now, to describe what he found in that place. Even though they were made from what he believed to be stone, they were in a state of shadow. Of flux. The Demon King had built that place, an attempt that he knows -- instinctively now -- he made to escape to other planes, other places, other times, from his destruction, to spread death ... all in vain, when the Hero and his stalwart Priest vanquished him forever. 

That chamber had waited in there, gathering dust, and darkness ... until the land sensed the next challenge, the next shift in the balance between the world of humans and monsters, between mortal selflessness and selfishness ... 

Between heroism, and hatred. 

He wonders, sometimes, what the Wizard saw in the chambers with the statues: when he turned their power on him. What ... the Princess had seen as well. Was the Wizard entranced or embittered by the idols that lay within the Demon's mouth? Was the Princess utterly terrified by what she saw in there when she was captured by the Demon Lord from the Castle? Just how far did the roots of Devil's Peak reach into the earth to play on the venial weaknesses inherent in all the people that fought, fell, and even died there those past few days years ago? Had it even played a part in the hearts of the people of Lucretia? 

The Knight feels that only Amlucretia, in all his mythic glory, would know the answer to that for sure. 

The Hero had been dying when they found him, but his bitterness and loneliness had been killing his soul faster until the end when he brought down the Demon Lord ... who had not been the King of the Peak. The people had forgotten him. Slandered him. Even laughed at him. He'd slain the beast that taken Lucretia's Queen, and peace reigned through the land without question. That was when the complacency set into the populace, even as they wanted for more tales of heroism against evil, and triumph over such. They didn't want to see the work that went into it, the pain, the consequences ... the actual blood and heartbreak: the price of surviving against the night for another age. 

The Priest had been the most at peace in Familia, guarding the Hero's Shield. Even when they failed in their quest, even when the nightmares had taken the night that fateful evening in the Castle, and they had been held in the dungeons: when the Priest had been tortured by the very people who should have respected him and his piety, his faith never wavered. Not in God. Not even in the people, forgiving them, believing them knew not what they did.   
  
Not even in him.

The Hero had warned him about what happened to heroes, but also of what happened when you turned your heart away from connection, from people, from what was important in life. The Priest had told him to remember what was important. 

He had almost forgotten.

He had almost forgotten when his friend, the Wizard, had proven to be a traitor to reason and his heart. He had almost forgotten when his friend fought him with the power of the Demon King, and he had been forced to strike him down. The Wizard deceived him into slaying the good King of Lucretia, had turned Lucretia against him, unleashed one demon after another against him, had spit upon everything they had shared together ... and made him kill him.   
  
And took away from him the woman he had loved.

At least, that is what he thought at the time. It had been so ephemeral. So transitory. Those meetings they shared ... the kiss ... the flowers ... She told him that he would be a fine heir to Lucretia, that she loved him ... that, no matter what happened, she would never stop believing in him.   
  
The Knight had been told that so long as one person kept believing in you, you could keep going. You could be a Hero. You would still have meaning. 

The dagger she plunged into her own heart hurt more than any torture devised by the guards in the Castle, more than a sword wound in battle, even more than the poison of the monsters he'd been forced to face ripped from the very demons and nightmares of his mind. Her words of hatred still echo in his heart, in his soul, even now, telling him that he never knew what it was like to fail, that he had abandoned her, that he was a monster ...  
  
Those were her last words, a final moment of pure spite, before the end.

And he ... almost gave up. He almost let the anger and resentment consume him. He went into that Cave. Into that Chamber. He thought about the best friend that betrayed him, the woman who lied to him -- who had never truly believed him -- and the people, the weak and gullible people who let suspicion and paranoia and fickle nature raise up heroes as idols, and cast them down just the same. 

He still isn't sure why he didn't close his eyes. Why he didn't give into the night. Perhaps it was the Hero's words, who died to save another despite all of his bitterness, his true nature shining forth one more time. Maybe it was the Priest who always supported him with counsel and fondness, and urged him forward to remember the true enemy. It might have been the memory of his friend and their battles against the monsters throughout the years and believing that, once, long ago the Wizard hadn't always been evil and twisted by jealousy, that their friendship had been real before Demon's Peak devoured it. That it hadn't mattered if the Wizard felt otherwise.   
  
It had been real to the Knight. 

He felt that darkness rising in him, and remembered her beauty. He knew she had been deceived. They all had. They had all been deceived by pretty tales, and heroic myths of larger than life beings that would save them, and lead everyone to prosperity without anyone having to do any introspection, any soul-searching, of their own. He wanted to believe her love had been real. It had been real to him.  
  
He held the holy sword, Brion, in his hands in that Chamber. The resentment and fury had broiled into a turmoil with his grief, and loss ... and he was determined not to let it win. He realized, now, what the King of Demons really was. He had been so close ... so close to plunging that sword into his breast, to die as himself ...  
  
But he hadn't.

He left the Peak. He used the power of Brion to seal the Mountain, and the evil within it. By the time he came down from the Mountain, he realized the monsters had ravaged the lands. Something woke up inside of him at seeing them attack the villagers. Without a Demon King to control them, they were running amok, completely consumed by chaos. Brion reminded him, through the song of its metal, the intent of the Hero that passed it on to him. He hacked through the monsters, each one falling, each one staining him with its blood and ichor, a sin absolved, a mistake faced down, baptizing him with the destruction of each of his own doubts, his own fears, his own agonies ...

It had taken him all the way from the Peak to Familia to the gates of the Castle itself. The guards rallied against the monsters as he cut the creatures down. The others fled to the Mountains, the guards and warriors of Lucretia pursuing them.   
  
They had won against the darkness.

But the morning hadn't brought warmth, or kindness. The people still believed him to the Demon King. The golden beauty they used to praise him for became the sign of the devil. The remaining guards surrounded him. But he had held firm. He held strong as the people pelted him with stones, and refuse. As the guards jabbed him with spears. But he didn't move. He didn't break. If he had died that day, so be it. 

That was when the child came.

The boy.

He had thrown himself in front of the Knight, telling the people to stop attacking him. He said that he had saved them. That he had fought the monsters. The boy's parents cried out for him, pleading for him to come back. The only time the Knight acted was to shield the child with his body, the one person who stood up for him after all his companions were gone, the one person who knew in his naivety borne from the old stories who he was ....  
  
The only one who still believed in him.

He would have fought the whole kingdom to protect that child. That was when the soldiers stood down. That was when the people grew quiet, for a time. It had been the Chancellor again. He had sensed his opportunity. The King was dead. So was the Princess. He was the only ranking noble left in Lucretia in line for the throne. Some of the returning soldiers hadn't participated in the attack on the Knight. Some of the villagers even came forward and told all around that he had fought them.   
  
In the end, it was banishment: upon pain of death. The Knight accepted it. He had killed the King. He had failed to save the Princess. The people still hated him. The Chancellor would make himself King. The man was welcome to it. The Knight had recognized just how arbitrary and capricious the people's goodwill truly was. The Chancellor would be lucky to hold Lucretia for a year. The boy ... he had been more devastated. He told him how the decision was unjust. It was unfair.

The Knight remembered telling the boy that it was all right. That he did what he had to do. Perhaps, a part of him believed he deserved this. If his friend could have turned on him like this, and the woman he loved ... It was time for him to leave. The boy didn't understand that, he didn't know. He asked, pleaded tearfully, for the Knight to take him with him. To make him his Squire. To adventure together.   
  
But the Knight told the boy he had to stay. He had parents that still loved him. People that were still there for him. He needed to stay. And perhaps, one day, when Lucretia remembered itself, when it was different, he might return. In the meantime, he was to hold his own. To remain true. To himself.   
  
Brion shone in his hands that day. That was one reason why the citizens didn't attack him again. Something in the sword cowed them. And the Knight took his leave.

It had been many years since he had visited this grave, a false stone and patch of earth that turned all too true when the true Hero died. He falls to one knee, bringing Brion out towards the head stone, in a salute. At his side, his Squire also kneels, raising his own blade.   
  
Watt Nabhe's son. The Wizard had killed his father in that fateful Tournament, so many years ago, that set everything in motion in Lucretia. They had come from the East, from the same lands that the Wizard had come years before, when the Knight had met him for the first time. As he had been leaving Lucretia so long ago, he found the boy -- an orphan -- abandoned by the people of that land, left to find for himself. The boy had no one. Neither did the Knight. One man had taken everything from them, someone the Knight once called friend. He felt responsibility. He needed someone to take care of his horse, and maintain his armour if he was to continue traveling. He needed someone to protect. He needed someone to continue believing in him.   
  
They had traveled many places together, back to the East where the boy had come from, and all around. They had many adventures. He told him all of his tales, even his darkest. He taught him everything he'd known. Soon enough, the boy would be ready for his knighthood. The Knight thought about leaving Brion at the grave of his predecessor, but thought better of it years ago. There would still be more challenges to face. More demons to slay. And some shadows deserved to be sealed away: to rest forever ... until they had to be faced again.   
  
Perhaps the boy might be strong enough to take that burden. A part of the Knight feels terrible for foisting that burden on him. But destiny chooses whom it will, as it has demonstrated. There is still more time, more training. The cottage that had belonged to the Hero still remains. They will repair it. There are creatures here they can battle and hone their craft further, and face what may come.   
  
And so, they pay their respects to the Hero, as the two rise to continue their tasks. The Knight looks at his Squire, and reflects on all the adventures they had had together, the wrongs they've righted, and is glad that he has kept himself. For a Hero does need one person to believe in themselves.  
  
He know understands, past all the pain and tribulations, that often that one person needs to be the Hero himself. 


	9. Final Chapter

Odio finally falls to his knees.

They won.

Despite him summoning them, across space and time, despite his plans to show them that they had fought for nothing -- for ungrateful weaklings and traitors -- despite making them face their worst fears and all the horrors he could unleash, forcing them to fight their worst enemies over and again, illustrating that they were selfishness and simply wanted to feel superior to being able to choose life and death for the lives of insects, they overcame the emanations of his hatred. 

He wondered, as he fell, feeling like a weak human being again why he couldn't win. Why he hadn't triumphed. But his hold over his anger, his fury, his rage, his hate has waned. It's gone, turned to ash in his mouth. He feels tired. Exhausted. And anger turned into what it always was: despair. He asked why he lost. Why he had to become ... this. He thought he had become the lesson that heroes had to learn, that there was no heroism, no good, that everything was meaningless.

But then, they told him why he failed. 

It made sense. They all had their reasons. Their experiences. Their perspectives. 

But, ultimately, Odio had forgotten what it was like to be a human being, that while things had been done to him, what he did afterwards had been his decision. He was the one that did those things. He was the one that gave up. 

It's as though a weight has been lifted from his chest, something he hung onto for centuries. Despair mellows into a deep sense of ... sorrow. A small, sad smile forms at the corners of his mouth as he reveals to them the one truth he has left. That prophecy, and destiny do not matter. That as long as someone gives up, as someone separates themselves from others, that anyone -- any being in the world that was, or is, or will be -- could become a King of Demons.   
  
And when he looks at them, at the prehistoric warrior, the martial artist, the infiltrator, the gunslinger, the fighter, the psychic, and the construct he sees that they do understand. That they can see it. That is the last of his power. His last message.   
  
And as Odio ... as Oersted also sees his own vision, of the person he could have been, the person he might have become if he had known others still believed in him, if he had realized then that he should have been the one person to believe in himself, he falls to the ground, dissipating -- finally -- into dust, hearing his own words echo around them for one last time.

_Don't forget ..._

_Anyone can become a King of Demons ... _

_As long as there is hatred, anyone can become a king of demons, in any world, at any time..._


End file.
